I went to the MIT campus the other day to swim and practice a bit with swim fins in celebration of my new Nitrox SCUBA certification (see http://photo.net/travel/diving/decompression-illness for why Nitrox is such a good idea). Before swimming, I had coffee with a former student, a girl from a Persian Gulf country. She asked what I thought of her idea for solving the problem of Israel’s existence: all of the Jews from Israel could be deported to the U.S. and resettled here. I pointed out that most of the Jews in Israel were the remnants of Jewish communities from Arab countries (e.g., from Baghdad (source)). Her fellow Muslims had found the presence of these particular Jews intolerable in ghettos within their cities in 1950. Her fellow Muslims found the presence of these particular Jews intolerable 500-1000 miles away in Tel Aviv. Why did she imagine that Americans would welcome these people as intimate neighbors?
I picked up a copy of the December 8 issue of The Tech. The biggest employment advertisement reads as follows…
Interested in Hedge Funds, Private Equity, and Real Estate? MIT’s Investment Management Company is Looking for Investment Analysts to Help Steward MIT’s $12 Billion Investment Portfolio.
MIT has achieved a new level of self-sufficiency. Profits from tuition stack up into a multi-$billion hoard. The students who pay that tuition can be tapped into to manage the accumulated $billions.
The pool locker room is still without any supply of soap in the showers (soap supplies in public swimming pools are required by law in many states, but not in Massachusetts). The scale that had been in the men’s locker room has been removed. We may be getting fatter, but at least we won’t be depressed by knowledge of that fact…
I’d highly recommend doing a 1 minute safety stop at half your maximum depth whenever you go deeper than 60 feet. I believe that this dramatically reduces the (already low) risk of getting bent. I think these are sometimes called ‘deep stops’ and are not — as far as I know — taught in the standard training courses.
P.S. I’m looking forward to your inevitable underwater photography article 🙂
— Joe
I thought you swore off SCUBA after your previous experiences. Well, in any case Nitrox should help. One of these days, in my copious spare time, I will dive again…